Workmen's advocate., 1887-01-08
WAGE-LABOR AND CAPITAL
BY KARL MARN.
Translated by J. L. JONNEs.

lloNtNcl lloNtllNA ult tit lh'dllo VI production which a particular capitalist may bring into the field, competition will make their adoption general; and the moment it becomes general, the sole result of the greater fruitfulness of his capital is that he must now for the same price offer ten. twenty, a hundred times as much as before. But as he must dis pose of perhaps thousand times as much. in order to outweigh the decrease in the selling price by the larger propor- tion of products sold; since larger sale has now become necessary, not only to gain larger profit, but also to replace the cost of production; and the imple- ments of production, as we have seen, always get more expensive; and since this larger sale has become a vital ques- tion, not only for him, but also for his rivals, the old strife continues with all the greater violence, in proportion as the previously discovered means of produc- | vision of labor and the employment of new machinery take a fresh start, and proceed with still greater rapidity.
 And thus, whatever be the power of the means of production employed, com petition does it's best to rob capital of the golden fruit which it produces, by re- ducing the price of commodities to their cost of production; and, as fast as their production is cheapened, compelling by despotic law the larger supply of cheaper products to be offered at the former price. Thus the capitalist will have won nothing by his exertions be- yond the obligation to produce faster than before, and an enhancement of the difficulty of employing his capital to ad vantage. While competition continually persecutes him with its law of the cost of production, and turns against himself every weapon which he forges against his rivals, the capitalist continually tries to cheat competition by necessarily in- troducng further subdivision of labor, and replacing the old machines by new ones, which, though more expensive, produce more cheaply; instead of wait ing till competition has rendered them obsolete.
 Let us now look at this feverish agita- ton as it affects the market of the whole world and we shall understand how the increase, accumulation, and concentra- tion of capital bring in their train an un- interrupted and extreme subdivision of labor, always advancing with gigantic strides of progress, and a continual em- ployment of new machinery together with improvement of the old.
 But how do those circumstances, in- separable as they are from the increase of productive capital, affect the deter imitation of the amount of wages?
 The greater division of labor enables one laborer to do the work of five, ten, twenty: it therefore multiplies the com petition among laborers five, ten or twenty times. The laborers do not only compete when one sells himself cheaper than another; they also compete when one does the work of five, ten, or twenty; and the division of labor which capital introduces and continually increases, compels the laborers to enter into this kind of competition with one another.
 Further in the same proportion in which the division of labor is increased, the labor itself is simplified. The special skill of the laborer become worthless. It is changed into d monotonous and uni form power production, which can give play neither to bodily nor to intellectual elasticity Its labor becomes accessible to everybody. Competitors therefore throng into it from all sides; and besides we must remember that the more simple and easily learnt the labor is, and the less it costs a man to make himself mas ter of it, so much the lower must its wages sink; since they are determined, like the price of every other commodity, by it's cost of production.
 Therefore exactly as the labor becomes more unsatisfactory and unpleasant, in that very proportion competitor increases and wages decline. The iaborer does his best to maintain the rate of his wages by performing more labor, whether by working for greater number of hours,